Thursday, December 16, 2010

HTA Fall Results

Yeah, I know, the season was played just for practice, and the results didn't count for ratings, but I'm sure the competitive juices were flowing when the Fall playoffs took place recently.

In 4.5+ doubles, Allen Teague's Old School team took the title by beating Katy 3-1. Katy won at line one, with Phong Regent and newcomer (4.5 rated) Juan Muhala beating Ben Whitsett and Neil Carpenter. Muhala may be one to watch.

The 4.0 doubles finals are scheduled for tonight. Copperfield's Shock and Awe, which features some pretty good 4.5 players in Letan and Rawls, will take on JCC in the finals. As you may know, a couple of 4.5 players are permitted to play, but must play at lines 1 and 2. (assuming my memory of HTA league rules is correct)

Katy Mason Creek won the 4.5 singles league behind Neil Carpenter, Monty Lindloff and Ky Kim. Margarito Arias will lead Sienna against Excalibur in the 4.0 singles finals.

119 comments:

Copperfield lost tonight to JCC in a tightly contested match. Match was 3-1. JCC was a tough team. So tough, in fact, that 5 of their players that participated this evening were bumped up to 4.5 at year end. It was a great match.

Michael Le Tan/Diego Cairampoma took line 1Dan Solis/John Bryant lost in straight sets on line 2Joe Lewis/Robert Richter lost in a 3rd set tie breaker against two 4.5 playersJohn Soh/Sandy Grewal lost in straight sets to a 4.5 and a 4.0

JCC had 5 players that had been bumped up to 4.5 at year end so I felt like we held our own. I wish I could have played! However, I had surgery yesterday morning to repair a torn meniscus so was on the sidelines cheering.

Actually Lance, "Find a rating" on tennislink says "S". I'm sure he'll get bumped up soon enough, however. Unless he starts tanking...Just giving you shit, its not like your the only team to ever underate a new player.

Congrats to all the winners! T-shirts are the award this season for flight winners. Subflight (division) winners and runner-ups also receive a promotional item like a hat or visor. But at the end of the day, (as in tonight in the finals) I personally will be playing for love of the game.

Need a bit of feedback from all. Trilevel info is going out next week- 1 month notice. Wondering if a longer notice is necessary. Would help me to get feedback. Can I get a consensus for future reference?

I'm wondering what the best way is for the HTA to publicize Tri-level and Combo. They're both fun events, and don't take up too much valuable time, but they seem to fly under the radar.

Tri-level is difficult because 3.5's and 4.5's don't generally play or even hang out together. If you want to have a good team, your 4.0's probably don't play with 3.5's either, since they're probably at the top of the 4.0 pool.

Does anyone know if any of the companies listed as sponsors on the HTA home page are actually still sponsoring anything? I know Gallery has not sent a check for at least 2 years. Mission hates HTA, and Hurd's indiscretions killed HP's sponsorship.

CB: Less junk on the HTA website; so you can find anything. Targeted eNewsLetter to league or tournament or junior interest. A forum like CATA where folks can ask questions and exchange info.

All great ideas. Some ideas I must pass upward. I believe the website will become more functional soon...Trilevel publicity- best thought I have heard- thank u freddy s.- is to have pros put together teams since they know men from various levels. Maybe we could offer some monetary incentive?? Then, there's always beer and food. That surely would increase participation. haha. Flier will go out next week to clubs and captains. Or if a volunteer wants to create it earlier for HTA, I wouldn't argue. Volunteers are a good thing!

Catherine: I thought this was just a "facelift" to the rules. At 33 pages, it seems much more than that. Is this a draft or the final version? Some folks might not want to spend a week with this. What are the primary changes? A lot of stuff has been copied (with appropriate copywrite permissions, I am sure) from the USTA. What is the rule when these 2 sets of rules conflict?

What I don't understand is wasn't Catherine Blevines hired specifically to concentrate on growing the game in Houston and awareness. I don't see that anything has changed or improved since Diana stepped down, then 2 PTers, and now a dedicated employee to drive leagues in Houston.

What is there to know about Combo and Tri-Level other than the date? In general: If Freeman has a team, he wins. If Hollis has a team, she wins. The rest of us just sit back, pay our money, and hope there's a wild card.

Check the margins and line spacing, 33 pages is more like 15, actually a few pages shorter than the 6 or so separate documents that made up the 2010 version. And anything beats "here are a few basic rules and we'll make up the rest as we go along".

Catherine has been responsive to me as a team captain so that's at least an improvement.

On the other hand, the fact that there is still no publicly available information on how HTA league results are factored into NTRPs is an embarrassment to the HTA. Despite multiple warnings/questions on this blog (and in private), Catherine and the HTA still screwed up the fall.

So, Catherine, if you read this blog, I want to hear it straight from you. How are spring/fall HTA results going to be factored into NTRPs? When is HTA going to post some information on its website about this issue?

If you think issues like this are trivial, here is an example of a question that I'd like to know the answer to: Can spring results cause a dynamic DQ?

The HTA should not provide rating info at all. Everything that needs to Ve known can be found on various websites. The only reason you'd want to know which league counts is so you can tank. This info won't be released.

At this point I would say it's fair to say that the 2010 Fall season which was supposed to be used for this year will roll into our ratings for 2011. It's better to follow the same Nov-Oct calendar year that the USTA does anyways because as it was only 1/2 of the Fall season was being used because the computer only picked up results up to Oct 31.

So that would mean only the second half of the 2010 Fall League will be used towards 2011 if I'm not mistaken. No matter what because of how the USTA cuts off the date for computer ratings the Fall will be split in half.

That is definitely something I would like Catherine to clear up. I understand an error was made, and am cool with that. But I'm curious about what, if anything, will happen with those matches that were supposed to count. Will they count for 2011, yes or no? (or "some" I guess)

Cheryl did not want the Fall results to count according to folks at the league meeting. They told her to do it anyway. She said she would. She didn't. It doesn't matter; just like the new rules don't matter. Cheryl and the HTA staff will do what they want; then lie to cover it up.

I personally think the fall league results should not count, but feel that it should be a uniform decision section-wide. The tanking in fall leagues state-wide has, at times, been blatant. Those cities have a big advantage at Sectionals. One only has to look at the Lubbock 4.0 team to see the benefits derived from fall league tankjobs. I didn't notice any of that in Houston's fall league, by the way.

Thanks, that explains a few things. In fact, I am actually glad it turned out this way. I realize now, the down side of ranking the spring and fall leagues and seriously hope we can fix the problem. What problem?, you ask. TANKING!!! I have never seen so much tanking going on in a season and you know I have been playing HTA for nearly 20 years. Two things need to change for these leagues. First, we need to eliminate "out of rank" playing. I don't care that Tennis Link is supposed to be able to compensate - there is no way that it does not bastardize the ranking system. If you are 4.0, you MUST play in a 4.0 league. There is no need to allow mixed ranking league play. And secondly, the winners of each rank in each league, gets to go to sectionals. That is the only way the Tanking will stop. At this time we have the carrot but no stick. Unscrupulous players will continue to use this to manipulate their personal rankings. If this is not addressed, HTA's reputation for running a fair league will degrade.

3:06pm makes a great point. Historically (10+ years ago), spring and fall leagues didn't count into NTRPs. As a result, there was no incentive to tank in these leagues.

At some point, HTA sneakily allowed spring ratings to be included in NTRPs without letting the HTA membership know or explaining why this changed.

So, anyone associated with the HTA want to explain why spring and fall leagues (that have no possibility of advancement to Sectionals) count towards our NTRP?

The main effect as I can see it is that it allows folks to manipulate their ratings without cost. Given that I and most of the HTA membership are not obsessed with Sectionals, let's just only count the summer results towards NTRPs.

Freeman, Red and other can just start captaining teams in Amarillo if they want to go to Nationals.

Only leagues that allow for the possibility of advancement to Sectionals should count towards NTRPs. If spring and fall results count in NTRPs, the league winners should be allowed in city playoffs in some form. Otherwise, only summer results should count into NTRPs.

The spring leagues started to count towards NTRP in 2003. Not saying that it was announced at that time, just that it started then. Reading between the lines, I would say that it was because of the way Dallas handles their leagues but have not got that confirmed. I was on the HTA board in 03 and didn't know, I remember being told that it did NOT count.

Every league has the Jason/Red types. Not a bad thing IMO. If you don't use everything with in your power to choose and keep the very best team, you won't make it to dallas, much less to the next level. As a captain, I have never taking the time to seek out great players at houston tournements as Jason and others have done, but that isn't against the rules.

What I can't acept it manipulating the league play to accomplish. Throwing a match on purpose, degrades the play. The present situation encourages the practice and I hope they figure out a solution.

Giving the tankers an easy way to input some bad data while degrading spring/fall league play for the average member is NOT an argument in favor of counting those results for NTRPs. It's an argument against.

WARNING: Before you renew your USTA membership check when your current membership expires. I just received an email from the USTA to renew with some promos attached (hat, shirt, coffee mug). I couldn't remember when my current membership expires so I logged in and discovered my membership is good through 2017!!! I wonder how many times I've renewed my USTA membership and didn't even have to.

Ok, I'll give my theory as to why HTA is doing this. In 2003, someone at HTA got the bright idea to secretly count spring results into NTRPs to "catch" all of the under-rated players who try to manipulate summer match results to stay at level.

This worked for a while, but at some point the cat got out of the bag about spring/fall results counting and now it's tanker's paradise.

I agree with Hacker on 12/27 that any policy on which seasons to count for ratings purposes, or any other anti-tanking policies, simply must be coordinated with the other leagues around the state, if not the nation. Unfortunately leagues like Dallas and Lubbock where off-USTA-season tanking is rampant (Lubbock maybe not rampant, but at least one very influential season), have polluted the pond for all of us. We can choose the moral high ground and count USTA league only, in which case we simply wish the other cities luck at Nationals every year, or stoop to their level and hope the masses or the powerful will eventually cry “enough” and a fix will be agreed or imposed. Sometimes there has to be a train wreck before people will admit there’s a problem.

I say the spring and fall shouldn't count. If people want to tank that bad let them play (and pay) tourneys instead of leagues. That way the leagues are more competitive and the tankers get what they want. They should have to pay for tanking.

Why did they start counting the HTA spring league in 2003. Not sure but believe it was because of the way Dallas does it. Why are we counting the HTA fall league, unfortunately, I believe I am the reason for that. I fought to get that implemented. My reasoning was to increase the competition of the HTA leagues so everybody would play with in their NTRP ranking. If you have been playing HTA leagues for as long as I have, you realize that the non-USTA leagues are weak. Allowing mixed NTRP rating play has further degraded the play in my opinion. My hope was for the HTA leagues to be as competitive as the summer leagues which might lead to an increase in membership. Call me stupid, but I didn’t realize the tanking effect. It never occurred to me, that w/o the incentive of sectionals, that there was no down side to tanking. So while I agree that eliminating the NTRP rankings for non-usta play would solve the tanking problem, I am still seeking a solution for the less competitive HTA leagues.I would rather see the non-usta leagues be turned into USTA leagues that count for a trip to Dallas.

1:31, it seems to say on Page 10 that these rules govern only the HTA leagues (i.e. Fall and Spring), and not the USTA leagues. Otherwise we might also have a problem with 1.03(h) that says only two courts need be provided. I'm only on page 13 but I'm hoping somewhere in here or in a yet-to-come document there will be local rules that address the USTA season where USTA League Rules are silent (e.g. start times for matches).

And 3:39, I think "flight" means for example where the 4.0 Mens is broken up into four flights. Ya gotta love all these terms.

ok so the greivance commitee got wind and PROOF that Alann falsified scores in the spring league season 2010 and punishment was only 11 months of no captaining. Now that is a slap on the wrist which tells me that if you cheat as a captain this is not allowed BUT nowing how he dictates and controls if george or danny are captain he sill still be running the teamI knew when he cheated at nationals in 2006 he was bad news

well at nationals orlando galvan played as another player. orlando was not on the team but someone else was and that person was not there. Roy is not his biological father so i guess he is considered a part time father

alann thrives on living on the edge. I agree I think they had a chance to ban him from playing and they didnt. From San antonio it should be an embarrassment to know that they hold a title that was won by cheating. your right roy knows about alanns cheating ways and supports him obviously. Roy was at the greivance so i am sure he persuaded the committee. Alann feels invinsable so he will never stop cheating.Red was on the san antonio team when they went to nationals why??????

once a cheater always a cheater. Not only oes alann cheat on the court but he cheats in his personnal life. Feel sorry for all the suckers who are in or associated in his life. If you ever were a friend of alann's and are not any more consider it a blessing

Are you saying" F##k the USTA" because that sounds about right to me. Money from sheep who are sent to the slaughter is keeps the USTA wallets fat. They sure are not spending money on player development so where is it going beside BS salaries for those who work in the organization.